Monday, April 19, 2010

Too Little Too Late

Too little to date?

So nobody can say I didn’t warn them…I have and will continue to do just that. The passage of what is being touted as healthcare reform in America is probably the most destructive policy ever introduced by our government any time in our history. Not only is the program itself a boondoggle but it’s a policy catastrophe waiting to be perpetrated on an American public that, I can only suspect, is by now like a drowning person resigned to their fate.

Not only is this healthcare reform a total debacle that will never see the light of day but it has totally consumed our seemingly detached President and Legislature from doing what we elected them to do in the first place – find jobs. Get America back to work Mr. Obama and then if you have time and you want to discuss health reform fine – start with your own house and give up smoking! Here’s a guy purportedly so understanding of the health care needs of Americans that he devotes nearly half his presidency to creating a Frankenstein bill (a bill made up so many different parts and pardons that it clearly is a grotesque mutilation of any really good idea that it might first have resembled ). But forget that for a moment. Is healthcare the number one concern of Americans today? NO! By an overwhelming majority, Americans are worried about JOBS!

Okay, that said. I have constantly warned you about the complete failure of our American markets by 2012. It is time to start setting some milestones. To be fair I can only predict far into the future and then I have to wait for those “event horizons” I keep going on about. The healthcare bill is not the domino that will cause the fall of all the others. Not so much by what it will impact, because like I said, this thing will never get out of the lab let alone be permitted to impact any population, at least by any responsible state legislature, but rather for what it failed to do – get America back to work. Like my daddy used to say the easiest way to get out of debt is to never get into it. That being said the next best thing from preventing a collapse of the country is not to spend more money but to make more money. And, no Mr. Obama, I don’t mean literally “make” more money as in print it. I mean “make” as in earn it.

Sadly, Washington is so consumed with this totally irrelevant black hole of idiocy that it has failed to note the country was gathering steam for a collapse in banking, markets and credit, the liked of which it has never seen before and will probably never recover enough to see again.

I am not going to bore you with the entire minutia because frankly there is simply too much to talk about in any one paper. The banks have been sitting on an investment from the treasury that was supposed to bail the country out, but banks are notoriously shortsighted. The fact is that they held on to the money until they inadvertently used it up – I am saying that the next brick to hit the glass will be the banks. The top investment banks will start crying ‘insolvent” in the summer of 2011 or as late as the fall of that same year. The persistent and totally underestimated joblessness will cause the next major shutter when consumer purchasing will cease. The final nail in the proverbial coffin will be the insolvency of the government after running up a four trillion dollar. For you bad on math if a million seconds ago was just 12 days and a billion seconds was only about 32 years then a trillion seconds ago was almost 32,000 years ago. Any of this sinking in? Well let me help you. If the United States could pay back this debt at a billion dollars a year it would take more time than it took for the universe to form. When I say a billion dollars a year in payback of course it would have to be surplus. But what if we don’t have a billion dollars a year in surplus income to pay this debt? Well, what would happen if you borrowed a million dollars and the loan shark came looking for you because you couldn’t come up with an extra $100,000 a year (that’s on top of all the income you need to survive that year)? You would find yourself between a rock and a hard place that is exactly where we will be when the clock strikes midnight and 2011 rolls over to 2012 – broke and with no hope of ever paying back a debt we should have never allowed ourselves to make.

Nobody knows for sure what will happen when this occurs. We’ve never been there before. We have been building up to it for decades but the piper has never come looking for his fee. He will. We won’t be able to pay and that’s just the beginning of a grim and disturbing disintegration of the American way of life. The infrastructure will crumble with failing bridges, highways and electric grids. The Internet will become slow and unresponsive and significantly more costly as government and business seek new revenues. Teachers, police, firemen and hospital workers will dwindle to below emergency levels. Crime will rise as will disease and finally, in the greatest irony of all, the voracious greed that marked the era of the baby boomer will catch up with them as they age (and age poorly) with no money for their care and a generation of their children who could care less (yes, even less than they did) the Baby Boomers will make a very messy fuss in their sad and dismal departure.

You may have heard that all the mega-stars of Hollywood have long ago found new digs in places like southern France and Tuscany. They can read the handwriting on the wall. They love the money we give them but frankly the neighborhood is a bit rundown for their tastes. Moving to more pristine views with less rubble and poor relatives hanging about is simply more comfortable. They have made peace with the fact that the money train may soon come to an end but they have enough stowed away to keep their chestnuts roasting for as long as they live…so what’s to worry about for Brad Pitt and Angie Jolie visiting with Clooney and Depp over a bottle of Chianti?

I know this harsh visit to reality will be troublesome for some and ridiculous to others but it is the reality nonetheless. I don’t know if there is anything to be done about this seemingly inevitable ending but, voting all those idiots out of Congress is a good start. Even if we can’t save ourselves we can put those thieves in the same sinking rowboat. However, I think Americans have suffered too much shell shock to rebound from the epic travesty of poor government and greedy corporations. I think we are just going to let the car roll off the cliff. I don’t know about you but when I go I want to go like my grandfather…in his sleep; not like the passengers in his car kicking and screaming.

So get ready for the banks to start folding in summer 2011.

Frank Bosson, CEO The Bosson Group excerpt from his paper “If you think it’s darkest before dawn…watch Congress pass a bill on a sunny spring day!”For other papers including:“If it looks like a duck…shoot it!” “Knock...knock…whose there?” “Billionaires and politicians are on your side…the side where you keep your wallet!” “Didn’t I just ask you for the money?”“There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, run for your life!”Request copies from frankb@thebossongroup.com